


a red swollen plum in my mouth (a milkweed full of blood)

by Hatice



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: IN SALTINESS, Minor Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sansa has never been 'a slow learner' fuck the show honestly, THIS FIC IS A EXPERIMENT, also i love and admire what petyr brings to the table in nefariousness, but damn, fuck y'all for teasing an Alayne Stone Vale Storyline, i mean he still needs to die, take the pairings with a grain of salt, what an icon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-03-02 17:10:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13322712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hatice/pseuds/Hatice
Summary: "She’s a sweet thing now, Your Grace, but in ten years who knows what treasons she may hatch?"Sansa Stark goes North and marries a Bolton.





	1. Chapter 1

**a red swollen plum in my mouth (a milkweed full of blood);**

 

—

 

 

There comes a man.

 

Bowed over his steed, wet earth splattering and flying beneath the dark storm of hooves.

 

Lord Baelish’s mouth tenses, its corner screws and turn downwards in a moment of unpracticed surprise. He prefers to do the surprising. It passes from Sansa’s eyes quickly and by the time the horse has reared before their travelling party, her lord-father had already assumed his look of amused, placid ease.

 

The harried messenger’s broiled armour bears the imprint of a man tied to crossed beams. A flayed man.

 

Sansa’s stomach falls through her feet. She jerks back her fists and the reigns in them so hard the horse whickers in protest but Lord Baelish has without having to look at her already reached out to cup her elbow.

 

Quick as a snake. He holds on, a firm hold, perhaps one might use to gentle a horse. The blood surges in her ears, eddying cold and sharp in her throat, a drum pounding. Through the material of her dress, she feels the caress of his thumb, stroking the back of her arm. Back and forth.

 

The rider is out of breath, he takes big gulping mouthful of the drizzle scythed air, water rasping in his lungs. Half drowned by the weak rain, he says he _must_ speak to Lord Baelish.

 

The Master of Coin tilts his head, that acquiescing challenging tilt. The pleasant, wry lilt of his voice calls out, it betrays nothing but the assured confidence of a man who has met only a brief interruption. “Speak, my dear boy,” he says through his skewed, intelligent grin. “if you must.”

 

The Bolton man straightens in his saddle, dragging himself up by great effort, he holds on desperately to his mount as his hand hunts into his cloak. “You must change course, my lord.”

 

“Must?”

 

“The Warden of the North,” he struggles. Clenching his teeth, he drags back the wet tarp of his cloak, hunting. Then he holds the parchment out, his beard stark against skin so pale he might as well be a corpse. “has tasked me – “

 

Sansa can hardly hear the rest, her breath blurs out her head, so short and not there. Her hair is still dark from dye where the hood covers it.

 

Lord Bolton’s house is the flayed man, _Roose Bolton_ is the Warden of the North, has taken her father’s rightful seat, they really had been going to Winterfell –

 

One of Petyr’s sellswords snatches the missive from the man before he has even finished extending his arm out to offer it, he hobbles back and offers it to her lord father with grim flourish. Littlefinger's smile remains in place as he takes it from Ser Shadrich, and only lifts his hand from Sansa's arm to break the seal. He opens it up, and he _knows_ that Sansa can never go back, _how could he promise, how could he tell her he was taking her home –_

 

The impersonal mirth in his eyes snaps into a strange, cool stare. He reads it once, twice, she sees the quick nick of his gaze, it is not like him. It has surprised him, whatever is in that letter.

 

Then neatly he folds it, in one square, then two, and slips it into his cloak. Lord Baelish rests his wrists on the horned pommel of his saddle and studies the messenger with his cool grey-green eyes.

 

“Please give our sympathies to Lord Bolton,” Petyr Baelish says with formality, his tone kind. “For the loss of his lady.”

 

“You may extend them in person,” the messenger says, “Lord Bolton will be accompanying his wife’s body to his ancestral seat.”

 

Sansa can’t make sense of any of it.

 

They aren’t going to Winterfell.

 

They’re going to the _Dreadfort._

 

* * *

 

 

—

 

 

* * *

 

She’s shaking, the stormy light that flares into the rooms of the inn whips and snap, her spine tingles from it, as if she feels it. Her hands she keeps in her lap and when he opens the door she flinches. She hasn’t felt this way since Kings’ Landing.

 

Lord Baelish goes to the window and he is a figure lanced in grey and dark. The back of his groomed head glistens from the rain, he has kept his fist behind his back, she sees his knuckles roll, tense.

 

“The betrothal,” Sansa whispers, “it wasn’t for you, it was for me.”

 

He turns to give her an apologetic grin. “Aye, Lady Sansa – “

 

 _Alayne._ She had been safe as Alayne, the moment she became Sansa again she was being married off to Boltons and subject to the schemes of cleverer players. He is before her, taking to his knees, suddenly sincere. “Hush, sweetling.” He whispers, taking one of her hands. When she does not look at him he takes her jaw too and tips it towards him. His eyes more grey than green in this light, are serious. “Didn’t I promise you your home back?”

 

“You said you would keep me safe,” Sansa says, her voice gaining volume. “And you intended to marry me off to the Boltons, they murdered my family, he put a knife in my brother’s _heart_ – “

 

“He did.”

 

Sansa’s jaw hangs open, “You want me to marry his bastard son.”

 

“No,” Petyr corrects with infuriating patience, “I _wanted_ you to marry his bastard son. Plans have changed.”

 

She wants to go back to the Vale, she wants to sit with needling Sweetrobyn and run through the snowdrifts with Myranda Royce, and pretend nothing is amiss when she calls Petyr her father, when he kisses her. Bastard brave and bold, unafraid. She is Sansa Stark once more and being sold to another husband, feeling the whip and snap of lightning like the fists of the kingsguard.

 

“Lady Walda – “

 

“Is dead,” Petyr says, “Ramsay remains his father’s only heir.”

 

 _I am the last Stark,_ she thought of her brother Jon at the Wall and was seized with such a flood of longing she could not breathe.

 

“You are Sansa Stark, the _last_ Stark, if the Northmen were allowed to publically acknowledge your brother’s claim you, the sister of a dead king, would have been considered a Queen.” Littlefinger reasons, stroking her knuckles, full of reason, in the Vale she might have allowed soothing. “Lord Bolton has been made a Warden by Tywin Lannister, your brother’s bannermen obey because they fear him, they have seen what he does to the opposition. He has a mad dog for an heir, a mad dog who has made enemies of them all. He needs the legitimacy of the Stark name, the political heft. He needs you, he needs an heir.”

 

Ramsay Snow had been legitimized by Tommen Baratheon, Sansa heard of this. At the behest of his father. His father already _has_ an heir.

 

Littlefinger and Roose had planned to give her to his terrible bastard, knowing his cruelty.

 

They had given her to monsters, imps, sickly little boys, now they were giving her to a bastard. Her mother would not have allowed it, her father had promised her he would have found her a good, noble husband. Both are dead and no one is left to defend Sansa’s honour, only Petyr, using her in his strategies.

 

“I’m not marrying his son,” Sansa trailed, “you _said_ , I’m not marrying him anymore.”

 

“No,” Petyr agreed, “You will marry the father.”

 

“I won’t do it,” she cried, “I won’t – “

 

“I can’t force you to do anything, Sansa.”

 

It’s a lie. He can.

 

“Refuse and we will return to the Vale, and you may wait out the war there. Wait as Boltons misuse the North, you can sit idle like a princess in a tower waiting for someone to save you or a Lannister to kill you. Or you can come here and face the enemy.”

 

“The enemy _knows_ he is my enemy,” she snarled.

 

“The enemy is opening his house to a clever girl,” Petyr held her chin, “A girl who watches and sees, perhaps more than others will realize. How do you storm a country without knowing the lay of the land?”

 

“Lord Bolton – “

 

“Will treat you with every civility a lord husband owes his lady wife, you know what he wants.”

 

Not a lover, not a wife, a _broodmare_. “He’ll kill me as soon as I birth him a child.”

 

“He won’t,” Petyr said firmly, “he cannot afford to be widowed a fourth time, nor to lose what you represent.”

 

“Why are we going to the dreadfort?”

 

“Perhaps Lord Bolton wishes to give you your own house without letting you feel Lady Walda’s influence, perhaps he wishes to spare you ghosts, perhaps he thinks it safer to have you in the dreadfort.”

 

Boltons killed Starks, they have hung the skins of Starks in their forts.

 

“How did Lady Walda die?”

 

“A terrible fall,” Petyr murmurs, “she slipped on ice at the top of the ramparts and tumbled down the stairs. She broke her neck.”

 

—

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

—

 

* * *

 

 

To get to the Dreadfort one must pass through the Sheapshead hills of the Manderlys, then Hornwood. The bullmoose on a field of orange flutters on the pole, and along it too, the merman of the Manderlys.

If they went West Sansa might see the on the horizon the lands of her father. But they do not. Neither do they stop to rest at the Hornwood estate, but go further and further until it vanishes from sight.

Ser Shadrich helps her down. Sansa sways a little, strange to be on the ground once more, and he laughs at her. “You are making an odd face, Alayne.”

She glances at him, a frown pulling at her temples. “Why did the Manderly flag fly on the Hornwood estate?”

“Haven’t you heard?” Ser Shadrich leans toward her with a conspiratorial smile. “The Manderlys took it to protect it from the Boltons.”

“Why?”

“Because Ramsay Snow stole the Lady Donella Hornwood and forcibly married her.”

“And the Lady…”

“Chewed her own fingers off, she did.” he said, grinning so that the scar along his ear tugged at the rest of his face. He was not unhandsome, the hardness of his looks an eerie match for the sly boyishness of his manner. “They found her with blood around her mouth, locked in a tower. She'd starved to death.”

Sansa shivered.

“Ramsay Snow is now the lord of Hornwood,” Ser Shadrich said. “and the Manderlys will soon be giving up the castle, if anyone’s to believe they’re loyal to the Boltons and to the iron throne. If the fat man is wise, he'll do as he promised.”

“Lord Manderly is content to eat while my family dies.”

“Lord Manderly knows how to stay alive, is what that sounds like.”

The proper thing would be for them to seek a night’s rest at the castle, but they do not. And though they are near enough to the Dreadfort to make it with half a night's ride the order to set camp is given. Lord Bolton is to meet them and he will be the one to escort them to his home.

The Manderlys still held the Hornwood estate for a time until they could pass it to the Bolton men that Lord Roose would be bringing to oversee.

The Mermen were sworn to the Starks, only cowing before this order because their son was held hostage by the Lannisters and all the Starks were dead.

They were Bolton men now, but not enough it seemed for Littlefinger to alert them of their arrival at White Harbour or to take rest in their fort, nevertheless their lands.

She imagined climbing upon her horse in the dead of night and racing toward the Hornwood estate, or back to the White Harbour - to declare herself. She imagined racing to the Wall, to Jon. And to Stannis.

 _I have had my fill of sovereigns,_ she thought darkly.

But she did not know them, she already had her protector and she had already once trusted the devil she knew over the devils she did not.

Yohn Royce would have killed Littlefinger had Sansa given the correct testimony, but Yohn Royce was a noble man and noble men were often fools. She knew better her odds of survival with Littlefinger who was shrewd and cunning, always a step ahead - than she did with old knights blinded by their honour.

And yet...Petyr would have given her to Ramsay? She thought with angry surprise as Littlefinger dissapeared into the pitched tents. To this monster?

When she went to rest, Ser Shadrich fell in behind her and trailed her like her own shadow.

* * *

 

 

—

 

 

* * *

 

At night she sups with Littlefinger in his tent. It is as lush and lavish and furnished with all the trapping of the South, the carpets rich and the burning brazier twined from brass and copper roses, the flame trapped behind the vines, glowing and warm.

They had drawn a bath for her before, from a stream stemming from the Broken Branch. An unusual luxury but a necessary one. _He wants me to look my best, he wants me to please a man's eye._

The water had been steaming, she had brought no ladies maids but the soaps and oils to scent the water with sat on a small chest, clearly selected by her lord-father who knew best in all things. She had washed most of the dye from her hair, watching the last of Alayne cloud the bath.

She had risen, the air freezing at her skin. She felt scraped raw, stinging. She brushed Sansa Stark's hair until it shone.

After supper of winterhare and summerwine, they sat together by the fire, their chairs close. At the Eyrie they bowed heads together and spoke often. She filled his cup like a good daughter and a good wife, and when he smiled she saw that his approval was tinged with something bitter.

"Does Lord Bolton care if I am beautiful?" she asked him lightly.

To distract him from his dark mullings, like a good wife and a good daughter, sometimes she overlapped and could no longer find the seam.

His mouth twisted, bright and wry. "Walda Frey was a pretty, bonny lass. Fat. He liked her well enough to visit her chambers often."

Sansa quietly resisted temptation, filling her own cup so he could not see her tense frown.

But Littlefinger saw. "Ask me."

"What?"

His smile grew when she nonchalantly met his gaze, as innocent and stupid as she'd had them believe her in King's Landing. He'd been the only one who saw the truth of it. He reached out and touched the curve of her head, tracing her skull. She closed her eyes, and trembled when the chill silver of his ring lay against her cheek.

He found a loose lock of her hair, he brought it away from her ear. She felt him stroking at it.

"If she enjoyed herself," he murmurred.

She opened her eyes to see him bow to bring it to his lips, she felt the kiss of it as though he'd been at her neck.

Sansa swallowed. "Did she enjoy herself?"

Littlefinger smirked. "Lord Boltons previous wives were quiet, reserved things. It is said Lord Bolton was quite fond of Lady Walda, that when he visited her chambers the entire castle would know - they'd hear her squeals and shudders all down the halls. He found that very endearing, her rowdiness. She always looked very happy after and Lord Bolton seemed to find it all satisfactory."

She could not bear to think of any bedding, least of all to one of the very murderers responsible for much of her misery. She could not pretend this information would serve as assurance that Lord Bolton would treat her kindly, she could not imagine enjoying the experience. She would loathe it. The last time she'd been a wife, the night had been horrible, Tyrion Lannister may have spared her the bedding but for how long would he have been patient?

"Men who love their wives still rape," Sansa blurted, remembering king Robert and Cersei all too well. "Why should Lord Bolton treat me gently?"

"It is within his best interests that you are happy with him." Littlefinger tucked her hair back behind her ear and patted her wrist. "You are beloved Eddard Stark's very own daughter. The Northern lords are kept in hand only by fear, they bow their heads but there is resentment in their eyes. If they hear of your mistreatment they will fight their leashes, you could be the very spark that lights a rebellion." she had spent her years before the Eyrie as a hostage in King's Landing, no one had fought for her then. Sansa refrained from scoffing. "Ramsay has aggravated them enough, they will not stand to have another daughter of the North raped."

"You were to give me to Ramsay."

"Plans changed."

"But you knew of his cruelty and you were to give me to him."

"Sweetling, a beautiful girl like you would have taken him well in hand. Is not my daughter as clever as I have taught her to be?"

_All the cleverness in the world could not save me fully from Joffrey's wrath._

"Lord Bolton would have kept him in check, no harm would have come to you. He'd have been eating out of your palm. Do you doubt your lord-father?"

 _Eddard Stark is my true father,_ she wanted to scream. "No," she said meekly, rising. And knew to kiss him before he asked.

She did not touch his cheek, but his lips, stained from the wine they had shared.

His neat beard tickled her mouth and she felt his pleased hum.

His ring caught in her hair when he wound his fist through it and gently, if firmly, pulled her away. "I do not do this lightly, Sansa." his eyes were green as dusty emeralds, murky with drink. She stood between his knees, his other hand only sat lightly on her waist. "I promised you the North."

"I trust you." it was only half a lie.

His hands fell to her hips, nudging her away lightly. "Go to bed," He spoke more quietly than he'd have liked, she felt a strange thrilling in her. That he did not want her to go. He did not want to give her to Roose Bolton, the Leech Lord.

"Good night, my lord." she whispered and left him drinking his summerwine.

* * *

 

—

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, I'd really love to know your thoughts! Please R&R!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, I really enjoyed writing this chapter and feedback, even a throwaway comment letting me know that you liked the fic (or didn't) would be greatly appreciated. Enjoy! And yeah, the tags keep changing as the story progresses because I'm sneaky like that. TAKE THE PAIRINGS WITH A GRAIN OF SALT. I'm not here for romance, I'm here for relationship dynamics and fuckery and backstabbery, so please join me on this murky journey.

 

—

 

* * *

 

 

 

Lord Bolton’s party joined them mid-journey, coming from the West with the fog of the evening.

There is a box between the men on a tram pulled by horses. Lord Boltons sits his with the chilling calm of an executioner. He comes, eyes like ice.

She is still a strange thing caught between Alayne and Sansa, measuring her reactions against the men’s temperaments and moods. She had to be as strong as her mother, but not too cold. She did not yet know this man, but she would. Or this would all have been for nothing.

Their parties meet and Littlefinger bows his head pleasantly, harmless. “I am sorry for your loss, Lord Bolton.”

Lord Bolton sits his horse without the pageantry of the foolish and green knights of the tourneys. He is not a man given to preening or posturing. His form is dangerous all the same. His eyes pass from her father to her, cool and unreadable. Sansa lets her eyes fall meekly, awareness burning her from the inside. He’d stabbed Robb through the heart and slit her mother’s throat - she swallowed, eyes glistening with rage, hidden by her eyelashes.

She did not parrot Littlefinger as she might have done as Alayne, she was Sansa Stark now and Sansa Stark would work to preserve herself, but never go so far as pretend sorrow on behalf of her kin’s murderers. Only a fool wouldn’t mistrust her outright, and Lord Bolton was no fool to fall for outright lies. But half-lies and half-truths, even a man like that could stumble blind and be felled.

She could not sing pretty songs and appease his cruelty and she’d tried to in the Red Keep, this was the North.

Roose Bolton looked more Northern than any man she’d seen since they killed father. His furs grey, his eyes pale as death - she hates him all the more for it.

But hatred will do her no favours here.  _ Bury it,  _ a voice whispered, and she did. She raised her head and met his eye, her face a mask of nothing. “My lord.”

“Lady Sansa,” he said, his voice deep and low, as familiarly Northern as one of her father’s bannermen in her youth when they came to sup and treat with the warden of the North. It rushed the blood in her ears and raised all  the hairs on her arms. She panicked wildly, her hands trembling in her lap, holding onto the reigns. This was to be her husband, this murderer. Her master and her keeper, she was dancing into a trap. Then he turned his horse back on course, and no more conversation was had.

All the while she thought watching his back, schooling the hatefulness from her eyes. That he came from her home with his dead wife, the audacity of his freedom, his entitlement, to live within the walls of Winterfell when she herself would be married in the ugly Godswood of the Dreadfort, away from her own home, kept from it.

He and Littlefinger spoke, Sansa hung back. She rode alongside the coffin of his wife with no qualms, the men in charge of it seemed all a fluster, fearful of death’s omens, the Stranger’s lingering. She wondered if they knew that their lord was to marry her, if they suspected. If they looked at her with pity because she should be jealous of the dead, pity because she should want her husband’s love selfishly. She would have laughed, but she would have been a mad woman.

Sansa rode, determined. She would outlive them all.

* * *

 

 

—

 

 

* * *

 

 

The fort loomed, pitching her stomach low, she swallowed her dread. Some gigantic hooded spectre bowed over the Weeping Waters, a phantom of grief. She’d heard of the torture chambers in its belly, that they hung flayed skins like tapestries - the skins of old Stark kings.

It was a giant of stone builty on blackened, rocky hills. A house in which the Stranger walked the halls and ruled in dominion. This was to be her husband, and likely her prison, her keep.

They crossed the moat of black water and she saw the walls were marked in the howling masks of men, their mouths hollow. Like as much to pour boiling water or tar upon an enemy. Passing under the gate was like walking under the shadow of the noose, her throat itched.

On the way to the dreadfort she’d seen the smallfolk working the lands, they stood to attention when their lord passed. If not for their fearfulness one would think they loved their lord. But the lands were green and farmed, as though the war had never touched them.

They did not know who she was, her hood hid her hair. She wondered if they would even care.

The inside of the Dreadfort is cold and smokey, it is a splendid old place, masterfully built but in the halls hang odd coverings, tanlike pelts she’d not sure to be swine or man. In the great hall where they take their dinner, Littlefinger sits on Lord Bolton’s right and Sansa carefully sits next to her father. She keeps her eyes on the plain fowl they are served, ungarnished and nearly bland - her husband to be drinks water, as she’d heard only Stannis did. She pays attention to her meal, Littlefinger sometimes whispers to Lord Bolton and Lord Bolton tilts his head to listen. Her first husband was drunkard on their wedding night and had the appetite for whores to drown his sorrows, Cersei had drunk deeply, bitterly - Robert Baratheon’s wine gut had jutted over his belt, a dissapointment to the Sansa who’d grown up hearing songs of his bravery. Poor Dontos too, had been stained by drink. She hated the taste of it, but saw the indulgence as an opportunity to relinquish control, to numben pain - she’d drunk on her wedding night.

Even Littlefinger could be compelled by a little pulling when he had drunk enough wine, he’d know she was trying to ply him and she knew it too.

If Lord Bolton did not drink then that indicated an unassailable control. If he came to her bed it would be with full employment of his senses and his cruelty, for he was sure to be cruel to her, the act itself in the shadow of all his betrayals would be cruel.

Bile swirled at the back of her throat, she swallowed back a great gulp of wine which Lord Bolton was free with among his guests. This was nothing like the great hall at Winterfell, there seemed a sort of fog, a smoke that hung low in the ceilings, she thought demons his in the rafters, grinning down at her.

Skulls hold candles in their cleaved off tops, molten wax dribbling from between their teeth.

She felt her guts roil and looked up to see Lord Bolton watching her. He hadn’t looked back once at his wife’s casket, even when they carted it away. An angry flush climbed up her face, reddening her neck - she turned her eyes away, attempting to look drunker than she was. Let the colouring be blamed on shyness, on drink, on anything else except her fear and her hatred of him.

I will be a meek wife, she told herself, taking a deep, uncaring drought of her goblet. I will be a little bird, a little lamb, a pet.

And then she would stab him through the heart and take the North, Littlefinger had promised her the North.

His hand founds her beneath the table, the chill of his ring soothing and sobering, bringing her back to herself. She rose to excuse herself and nearly leaned toward him before she realized that she was not Alayne any longer and could not kiss him, certainly not in front of her soon to be husband. It was a relief and a great annoyance too, she had become too used to their games in the Eyrie, only now they were not safe, not alone any longer. She could not share with him as easily as she had before. Here, they had an audience.

He was selling her. As her father might have sold her eventually. To a handsome, good, brave lord, Eddard Stark might have promised - but she was chattel all the same.

And tomorrow she would wake, to be readied for marriage, for sacrifice, to be made a meal of again.

* * *

 

—

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *fans self* oh my gerd, guys. GUYS. I did not expect it to get this saucy, this fast. I surprised myself.

 

 

—

 

 

* * *

 

Her rooms in the guest quarters are large, but they have a chill to them that no hearth can lift.  _Tomorrow I will miss this cell, beg for it, when they drag me to my husband's chambers..._

How was she to suffer the marriage bed? She wondered, trailing her hand along the window. There was only one, overlooking the courtyard, and half-a-dozen arrow-slits in the walls. It was to these she gravitated toward, hidden from sight, peering into the quiet grounds, hidden. She had tried not to think about it lest she feel the need to empty her stomach, but she couldn't afford to enter into this without preparation of some sort.

She grew angry, feeling the glower of the ugly tapestry behind her. A hunting scene with boars that looked less like swine, and more like men. Men were swines, the thought of one heaving themselves over her, into her...it filled her mouth with bile.

She tried to imagine her husband this way but could not. To see him out of breath proved too much for the imagination, to imagine him as base and weak as other men, would make him a queer sort of disappointment to her. That he were just like any other man who needed to die.

How would he be like? Should she expect to be bent over and present herself like some field animal, let him do the deed and leave her alone. That was the best she could hope for, wasn't it? She hated it.

Or would he prolong the torture, her debasement? He would hurt her perhaps, men had that weakness, to destroy their wives wills and have hollow ghosts serve them, birth their children, faceless women who looked forward to death as their only escape from their own irrelevance.

It would hurt. Inside of her, it would rip her open and then his children would rip her open. The thought of suffering in his bed and then perishing in childbirth filled her with such rage she found she had to sit to calm her fast heart, her shaking hands. To birth monsters as Cersei had and then die in the service of monsters. Was this to be her inheritance?

He would not be like Tyrion, he would not give her choice and see himself as kind for it. He would not delay.

Ser Shadrich had escorted her to her rooms from the hall, she felt a chill to remember it again now, how they had stopped for three women veiled in gray to pass them. He had shivered, "Death trails them."

The Silent Sisters, Sansa had watched them dissapear with a queer lack of terror. She wondered why Ser Shadrich pretended to be afraid of them, sometimes he said things to seem harmless, she supposed.

They had come for Walda Frey. Roose Bolton's dead wife would not be sleeping the rest of her eternity within these ugly walls, no - the silent sisters had come to scoop out her guts, line her stomach cavity with salts and boil the flesh from her bones. They would accompany the corpse back to the Twins were she would be laid to rest with her other rat relations. Did the Freys have crypts? or did they bury their dead? Or did they eat them? Did the rats devour them?

Lady Walda was a big woman, it would take a great deal of time to render the fat from her, she imagined.

"They pulled a babe from her," Ser Shadrich whispered. "I heard the men talk, Lady Walda was with child."

"...with child?"

"Lord Roose must mourn her doubly so." Ser Shadrich agreed lightly, "one should protect their investments better."

An  _investment._ She was nearly sick.

She sat on the bed now, she should be savouring the last night she'd have opportunity to have a bed to herself. The last remnants of girlhood she was supposed to pretend to have, would be  torn from her.

And what would happen to Sansa Stark?

She thought of her mother, flung into the water like a mutilated trout, to feed lesser things. If she had died in Winterfell would her father have sent her body back to the Tullys? How poor, she thought for a moment. But then, the Riverlands had been her mother's home the way the North was Sansa's. Perhaps it was a mercy to be returned home.

Would Lord Bolton give her body back to Winterfell? She could not imagine he had the grace for such a thing. Or would he hang her skins in a room, and take another wife, and make another  _investment?_

  _I won't die,_ Sansa swallowed back her disgust and lay back onto the bed. Petry wouldn't do this to her if he wasn't being clever and cunning about the outcome, this was an opportunity. Tomorrow night would be an opportunity. The ceiling's dark itself swarmed like a smoke, showing her nothing. _I will kill them and not die._

But it sounded childish to her, and she dared not speak it aloud, even in this empty room.

* * *

 

 

—

 

* * *

 

The maids fuss with her hair, her cloak. They are silent, dreary things and Sansa is learning that there are few women in the Dreadfort for these solemn girls are from the fields, sheep herder's daughters and farmer's daughters, they handle her things with a careful inexperience. How strange to have a keep with no women. They startle and do their work with fearful quiet, eager to flee. _It's like looking into a mirror,_ Sansa thinks, remembering her youth in the keep of her family's enemies. She tries to be kind to them, but she doesn't have the stomach for it and they are only here for her wedding preparations. She will never see them, or need them again. She tried to be kind, but her own nerves rattled with the promise of what is to come.

Lord Baelish sits on the window sill, hands clasped on folded knee and there is a low smile in his eyes, but that could be but a suggestion of the light in the room. Sansa doesn't have the heart or the nerve to return the sly expression, she doesn't feel very sly, she feels like she's in King's Landing, being summoned by Joffrey and bearing the ill-advised hope that if she looked a certain way he wouldn't hurt her. She'd worn her prettiest dresses and did her hair hair beautifully, he still hurt her.

But Joffrey was a boy, choking to death at a wedding.

Littlefinger gives her no circlet of black stones or amethyst poison. She wears her maiden cloak sown by expert hands and when the glum faced maids leave she turns her palms outward and lets the sides trickle against her skin like water. It's soft enough that it'll slide right off when Lord Bolton deems to take it, another skin, another offer of flesh. _You fought the imp_. It was necessary to do, unkind - _he still wanted me, nonetheless, was it really unkind?_

She turns to him as he stands, extending his hand with the prompting grace of a dancing partner. He folds her fingers and brings them to his cool mouth.

"Why in the Dreadfort, why not in Winterfell?"

Littlefinger steps forward and her heart flips, her skirts swaying against his fine tailored boots. He smiles in that musing way that tells her he approves and that he is intrigued all at once.

"Wouldn't he want to make a spectacle of it?" Sansa asks quietly, whispering in this empty room. "To marry me in my father's house and show the Northern lords his might, control, legitimacy?"

Petyr laughs, the soft delighted laugh of a father and puts his hands heavily on her shoulders. She has passed him in height even further than when she took measure as he kissed her nearly two years ago at the Vale.

"Was that not the initial intention?"

"Clever girl," Littlefinger murmurs "Yes. Such a thing would have provoked Stannis Baratheon, baited him from his fight at the Wall."

_Jon is at the wall._ If it were to reach Stannis' hearing would it not fall into the ear of her bastard half-brother Jon as well?

What a stupid thought. _He wouldn't come for me._

Robb didn't come for me.

"Is Lord Roose not ready to fight Stannis?"

"The North will fight Stannis whether it wants to or not, Bolton or no. Soon."

"And the Lannisters? What will they do to know that the man they named warden of the North is marrying a traitor's daughter, their son's killer?"

Petyr's look was devious. "Cersei herself blessed the union." He pulled from his sleeve the crisp missive, enjoying her look of confusion. "You see...you were meant for his bastard, who King Tommen himself legitimized. It is difficult to arrange marriages between highborn girls and bastards."

"...Cersei - "

"Thinks I have given to the Boltons a whore with red hair, masquerading as the dead Sansa Stark."

"How _long_ will that be what she believes?"

"Sweetling, it stings that you would suggest that I'm incapable of making the Queen believe anything for as long as I'd like."

"The Northern lords, some of them will recognize me..."

"And yet Lord Roose himself has never set eyes on you. He will be an innocent - or as innocent as a Bolton can be, considering."

"There is a war to come," Sansa protested. "I don't understand you at all. Lord Bolton and Lord Stannis _will_ go to war."

"A war can go both ways, sweetling, you know that already. Should Stannis win this war he will need a Stark, Bolton widow or no - " she gasped, "if Lord Bolton wins, then your position grants you immunity and power, and we will make our moves from there."

"I am only safe until I give him an heir."

"Perhaps after you give him two. An heir and a spare," Petyr says, "Lord Bolton cannot leave such a thing to chance."

"You want me to give him sons!"

"I want you," he leans closer, her heart thumps in her throat and his hands slide down to cup her elbows. "to be a very _convincing_ wife, dutiful, but not loving. If you pretend such a thing he will see right through you, Boltons are shrewd men, it's true what they say about flayed men and secrets. You fear him? Loathe him? Let him see you fight to hide those things, let them make you honest to him. Do not defy him so much as make him aware that the desire to exists. You cannot sing this one to mercy, sweetling. He knows this is a clever game we play here. You see, Cersei trusts the North just as much as Roose trusts the South - she says give him the traitor's daughter, knowing full-well that she thinks you an impostor and a whore, and thinks herself very clever to secure further the Bolton alliance with a forgery. Lord Bolton is fully aware that the Queen thinks to sell him a fake. And so they move around each other, around this deceit. But Northern lords know their ladies, Umbers will know your face and tell him the truth of it."

"And will not the truth of it reach Cersei?"

"Eventually, though I am prepared for the eventuality, Cersei will be too busy by then to bother with fake Starks."

Her eyes fill with tears. "And you? Are you happy to put me at risk so? I thought you cared for me."

He cups her face, thumbs brushing the angle of her cheeks, under her eyes, sweeping away her tears with a look of both reproach and approval. "Come now, Sansa," he says. "That is a poor attempt. I care for you more than you can imagine but you will be able to imagine it, soon. You have to be strong, stronger than your mother would have been."

"You would leave me too?" and it tugged at her heart, the thought that their days at the Eyrie were to end forever, for true. He was giving her to another man, freely, easily. "Desert me?"

"I must."

"A father would never do this to his daughter."

"You lie," he said. "fathers do worse to their daughters always."

She thought to protest, but that would be another lie - and he halved it with his own mouth, drawing her down to kiss her. It was slow and obscene, and she felt a heat in her core that he'd teased in her all this time, always on the cusp, yet never letting her drink it full for true. She whimpered into his mouth, the tears had dried on her cheeks, they would glisten prettily in the pale light of the godswood. She nearly wept for true then, for Ned Stark was her true father and he would have given her to a noble Northern oaf, but Petyr-Littlefinger-Lord Baelish stood damning her, whisking her away from a pit of vipers only to deposit her into the laps of murderers worse, guiding her carefully, syrupy sweet made killing. Perhaps a true-er father than her true father, together he would give her their heads.

He was her shadow father, her father forged from oaths, dark covenants, promises that _meant_ something in a future where the last thing she'd ever be was a docile wife to a fool.

True fathers don't kiss their daughters so, don't promise them blood and conquest.

And a true daughter wouldn't draw him close, wouldn't answer his kiss with a moan.

But she was his daughter, _his_ \- needing him, and the only thing keeping her mouth from spilling, from begging him to fuck her into the floor was the cunning seal of his own.

 

* * *

 

 

 

—

 

 

 

 

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope it was as good for you as it was for me.
> 
> Lord Baelish is wicked, but damn
> 
> I still would.


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

 

 

—

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Lord Bolton is a Northern man. He killed her mother, her brother, his foreign wife – but he looks more Northern than she has seen in a while.

For all the times she had suffered the petulant prettiness of groomed Southerners, as a hostage, the younger Sansa had once imagined she might _kiss_ the first true Northman she’d meet full on the mouth.

Lord Bolton does not look like he kisses much, truth be told, and Sansa cares for killing Lannisters and others dangerous to her more than she cares for a giving mouth. She has had enough of men and their unwieldy desire, so bright in their eyes, that the idea of being noticed in such a way again fills her with sick dread. She might take courage, petty courage, that Lord Bolton looks as reptilian as he does, the greyness of his gaze, his inexpressive mouth.

She does not expect gallantness from him nor anyone, but if he does not want her so wildly as the rest, perhaps she will not be as brutalized.  _ He wants your name, your claim, your lands... _

_ He wants an heir. _

Sansa’s neck stiffens as he takes off her cloak, the Stark wolf she has taken off once before already. She feels not unlike she has been stripped naked before Joffrey again, but she steels as the silver wolf and its artful embroidery begins to be folded tersely behind her by some man loyal to this murderer. She feels as if they are ripping it apart.

Then the Bolton cloak settles over her shoulders and her lord husband secures it against her throat, the merest touch of his fingers makes her shiver, colder than frost. His glance is slow, lingering and inscrutable. She can’t tell if she has displeased him or not, whether he mistakes the shiver for fear or desire, maidenly or mummery. There’s no tenderness in him, he is economical, he’ll take her like he’d take a bitch.

Fat Walda was a once bonny lass, glowing next to her grey lord husband and he did put a babe in her, and her husband gave her her due as his wife. He visited her chambers and she was  _ willing _ .

He had been fond of her in his way. Lord Bolton’s _first_ wife had been a dutiful mouse in the bedchamber, but Fat Walda made noise, was bawdy, _reached_ for him.

Sansa had heard that he had quite enjoyed bedding her.

Sansa didn’t know Lord Bolton could be fond of anyone. She wasn't fool enough to hope too highly about him being gentle with her later, he doesn’t look like a man who feels such things, guilt is useless to him.  _ You put a knife in Robb’s heart, your  _ **_King_ ** _ , and now you marry his sister. _

But bedding his wife enjoyably enough, as though he was just a man. If he was just a man, he could be managed, he could be killed. Surely?

Petyr’s birds whisper a great deal, the servants found her at the bottom of the stair, she’d snapped her neck poor thing. Littlefinger never told her that Lady Walda had been with child. Her and the babe gone, what a pity.

Lord Bolton had sent his wife’s body back to the Freys after riding for the Dreadfort and his bastard son was charged with overseeing Winterfell in his father’s absence. She has managed to catch how very little is said of him, and garners there is nothing more monstrous than the studied lack of whispers about  _ that  _ creature. Petyr spoke of the father, very little of the son Sansa was going to marry in the first place.

But she cannot rely upon him forever, not always - in the Vale she’d had to catch up to her lord father and please him by matching him in intrigue. He expected her to succeed here, he would help, but the lion’s share of that success she must achieve on her own.

He was to leave her soon as well. She sat at the small muted feast, there were few guests to be had - few had been invited as to avoid alerting any of her father’s old allies into putting a stop to it, Sansa suspected. But considering the rush of the nuptials and the suddenness of Walda Frey’s death,  Sansa didn’t know if it would have been something to even fear, Lord Bolton had seemed to have them all well in hand thus far.

Umbers and Flints, she saw a smattering of them, wards given to Lord Bolton, no more than children. No Freys, understandably - thank the gods. She hoped that meant there wouldn’t be a bedding. Sansa sat next to her husband, embodying the icy loveliness of her dress and tried not to show the trepidation that nauseated her.

Lord Bolton filled her cup, Sansa glanced furtively at Petyr and tried not to let her eyes fill with tears. The dark drafty hall of the Dreadfort was amber with the waxy sheen of the lanterns, it was unseasonably warm, the sweat gathering beneath her high, feathered collar. Was it the Dreadfort, or had nerves made her body so jittery and hot?

She smiled politely at the cup and lifted it to her lips to wet them with the sweet chilled wine but set it down quickly enough.

Lord Bolton had not spoken to her, she dared not call his filling of her cup an attentiveness but another test. She had drunk at her first wedding, if he were to hurt her...then let her go into this game with her wits about her, she’d rather be caused pain when she was awake than to let drink muddle her into making mistakes.

She was sure he saw everything she did and more; everything she did not. She spoke nonchalantly to her sparse plate.  “Thank you.”

It was not shyness in her now, but wariness - she remembered King’s Landing and all the graces she’d armoured herself in, how they had still hurt her. She tried to believe Littlefinger, but Petyr was so far away. Sat at one of the other tables with his men, husband and wife alone occupying the feast-riddled dias. The sight of the roasted pig with the fruit between its jowls made her sick.

He would leave her. He looked as unflappable as she expected, amongst his men as they ate and drank - they did not drink too much, mindful of the journey ahead. He was handsome and perfectly groomed, like a beautiful, untouchable bird. Flying away from her.

If she went into the wine, she might weep.

Her husband did not drink, he would be no clumsy fool. What would he do later tonight? Hurt her. He must hurt her. There were no great lords to hear him and challenge his ungallant behaviour, and even if they were, what would they do? They had not challenged his brutishness, or his son’s. Further, they married off their daughters all the time and had done worse to their own wives. Her mother did not love her father when they married, her mother had never told her how the bedding had gone - what it was like to endure such things, Sansa had been too young.

To have found herself in the Dreadfort instead of Winterfell...she didn’t know what she was more; frightened? Or relieved? Scarcely widowed a day, and Lord Bolton had been before her in the small, dusky weirwood, exchanging vows.

He is a calm man. There must be ice in his veins, she thinks.

_ I can’t allow him to hurt me, _ she thought. Her father was a brothel keeper, she had listened and learned from him, eavesdropped and understood. From Shae to Margaery to Myranda and Mya, and even to Aunt Lysa who had been very...vigorous in her ardour. 

_ Some women like tall men, some like short men, some like hairy men and some like bald men. Gentle men, rough men, ugly men, pretty men, pretty girls... Most women don't know what they like until they've tried it, and sadly so many of us get to try so little before we're old and grey. _

Men, on the other hand, could want anything. It didn’t matter the women, all they wanted was a warm place to bury themselves. They spat on you too, they debased and degraded you - it didn’t matter if you were the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, or a Silent Sister with vows to the Stranger. They’d bloody you, and not care. Women, children, young boys...living and the dead. They fucked you and they hurt you.

He couldn’t hurt her if she _wanted_ him to fuck her. If she was...she felt bile rise in her throat, _wet_ for it.

It was all a matter of the mind, of pretending and pretending until it was real. If he did not disgust her, she didn’t need to stop hating him, only to let her body tolerate his.

He must know how to cause pleasure, how to please. If she  _ wanted  _ to be pleased…

It wasn’t a matter of wanting him for want’s sake, he who had caused her so much misery - it was a matter of survival. She didn’t want to hurt again. She didn’t think to seduce him, no - she did not think Lord Bolton could _be_ seduced, nor did she pretend _she_ knew how to seduce.

She would have to seduce _herself_.

She had lain awake all night agonising over it, her vehement hatred warring with her disgusting sense of practicality; survive, survive, _survive_. How did the whores do it? They had to pretend until it was true, make sure they were wet so they wouldn’t tear, pretend to enjoy it. Pretend he was someone else. Pretend she was someone else?

_ Don’t provoke him. _

He’ll _know_ if you’re lying. You have to be Sansa Stark this time, you have to be the name he married so you can be the knife that guts him.

She had oils, she had an imagination, she had the sweet-bitter memories of Littlefinger’s kiss - the touch of his hands stroking her jaw, her neck, in the snow when he first lay his desire on her to follow his words of them. 

“Lord Bolton,” she blinked in surprise to see Littlefinger before their table, and cursed her moping. She couldn’t afford to not see everything. “My lady.”

Petyr bowed his head at the _usurper_ , this Warden of the North and then smiled at her. He was careful to look as fatherly as possible, they had fooled a great deal of people, but Sansa had learned to recognise the glint in his eye that had always seemed an echo of her - the sharp teeth of some small animal full of beauty and poison, the slyness in him had become a slyness in her. His want, her want. His cleverness, hers - his aims and his ingenuity a thing of beauty and aspiration, his ruthlessness, his selfishness. She was his daughter and his creature, she’d know it would one day be said. But _he_ belonged to her too.

He was hers and he had said his goodbyes with his searing mouth, cruel and tender both. She was to be a bride to a dangerous man, he’d given her away, he’d given her the lovely wickedness of his kiss hours before a wedding night to a man who would have _nothing_ sweet to give her. 

For so long he had been what she had known, his protege and his disciple. At his side, at his knee...he was the only man who had known her for what she was, with all her sweet singing and feathers.

“You leave tonight, Lord Baelish?” her detached surprise perfectly convinced and his wistful smile convinced further.

“Alas, Lord Arryn would fret otherwise. Let me congratulate you on your marriage, may there be happy, happy years ahead.”

His lies were hers as well, and they came so easily they felt a music, familiar and shared between them alone.

Sansa blinked hard so her eyes would not brim over and covered it up by laying her hand on the hard sleeve of her husband’s arm, she felt no steel gauntlet beneath it but neither was she unarmed. She averted her gaze with the shyness of a new bride, even as her heart tore itself with hatred and misery that he should leave her here. “Thank you for your kindness, Lord Baelish.” she made herself say demurely, as though it was the thought of her husband that occupied her and made her girlish. Girlish! She embodied the iron of her dead lady-mother and looked up at her husband who had not stirred or spoken, “Should we not retire my lord?”

She  _ felt  _ the quick kick of Littlefinger’s mouth, seeing everything - amused by her intentions and proud too. It was not that she was eager to go the bedchamber, but that she dared meet within it by initiating the proceedings. She’d turned to her husband as though she found Littlefinger the most forgettable creature on earth, and knew not even the greatest mummer in the Seven Kingdoms would know the truth of it.

Lord Bolton’s eyes were the pale grey, ice-sharp blue of dawn. Taking all the time, eating it up. He tilted his head infinitesimally and it was Ser Shadrich who rose in the periphery, though her husband did not even look at him to make him summoned. “Lord Baelish,” he said, and her heart flipped for his eyes did not leave her. “I will see you off.” and then to Sansa he finally said, quietly. “Go and prepare yourself for me, my lady.”

Speechlessly she allowed Set Shadrich to lift her from her seat by the hand, and tried not to look too wildly between her lord-husband and her lord-father. She had never liked to be shut out of talks, and men talked _ever_ so much - but Littlefinger had always made sure she was present, a part of the conspiracy. This was all but a test, this marriage, his departure, and proof of his trust and regard of her. He would do his part, it was time for Sansa to do hers.

_ Go and prepare yourself for me. _

It was as close as a man had ever come to seeing her as his equal, or at least as a player in her own right.

_Go and prepare yourself for me._

She gave a gracious nod and slipped her arm into Ser Shadrich’s. She gave one final dismissive and distracted farewell to Lord Baelish, they had already said their _true_ goodbyes in the usual fashion before she’d married the man he’d chosen for her.

_ Go and prepare yourself for me. _

It was all just a matter of time, a matter of will.

_Go and prepare yourself for me go and prepare yourself for me go and prepare yourself for me go and prepare yourself for me go and_

This was her mission. She swallowed.

_ my lady. _

* * *

 

 

 

—

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Gayl Jones, Eva’s Man
> 
> I was dissapointed that we were teased about a devious Alayne Vale storyline in one finale only to be dropkicked into rape and a completely dumbing down of Petyr Baelish the next. Littlefinger despite all his evilness, would never in any world have given Sansa to the Boltons. It made no sense politically, strategically, and were it not for Aiden Gillen's masterful ability to somehow make gold out of bullshit, I would have clocked out of Game of Thrones forever. It is not that the Jeyne Poole's storyline was given to Sansa that irks me, it is the potential that was teased - the Vale storyline in the books is one of the most intriguing parts of the entire series, it sees a Machivellian relationship between mentor and mentee, which regardless of shipping preferences is still such an integral part of Sansa's character development.
> 
> This story has been brewing with me every since Sansa was sold off to the Boltons, I decided to approach the dumbass angle the show runners took with sending her North, with my own flair and frustration. So, Sansa goes North, but she goes better armed and better informed and with some AGENCY. There is nothing wrong with Sophie Turner's portrayal of Sansa during that time, so this is not an attack on the character/actor, nor an attempt to sneer at women who have gone through rape or suffered sexual abuse, or in any way an attempt to tell you how one should behave in any of these situations. Watching the rape scene was disturbing and I also felt very vulgar because it could have been made completely unnecessary, and also because it was unfair for the writer's to tease us about Sansa finally having agency and taking herself back in one season only to backtrack the next.
> 
> So in essence this fic is about POTENTIAL and following through.
> 
> It's 2018, graphic rape shouldn't still be a trope people use to make their shows/films feel 'edgy'.
> 
> Rape shouldn't be a character device used to break women and make them suffer just so they can then - and ONLY THEN - be capable of redemption or strength. Rape is awful shit, women are strong for surviving it - but that's not the only way women are strong, and it's not fair that shows feel the need to sexually debase or break a woman in a storyline before they find them worthy of praise/strength. As someone who is all too aquainted with the ugliness of men's desires and their entitlement, Sansa's rape scene fucked me up and it made me fucking angry, they couldn't just 'fade to black' or 'camera pan' away, they explicitly filmed the rape. fuck that.
> 
> Sansa like all girls, is just a girl trying her best to navigate a world that is trying to kill her or take her apart. I am not writing a 'Sansa comes to the North and weaponizes sex' story, I'm writing a Sansa comes back to the North to fight a shitty situation and try to play the game as best as she can, as one still learning, but as one who has at least learnt been allowed by her creators to have learnt SOMETHING.
> 
> I'm giving Sansa the material she should have been given if you know, the showrunners actually gave a fuck about women who don't fit their fanboy sex vixen archetype or the badass femme warrior archetype.
> 
> Fuck, I'm going now. Rant over. Just saying.
> 
> Let's hope I can do it.
> 
> Rants you can find by other people about the showrunner's consistently robbing Sansa of any agency whatsoever;
> 
> http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Thread:52618
> 
> https://www.themarysue.com/we-will-no-longer-be-promoting-hbos-game-of-thrones/


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